


What's Left of Me

by tabacoychanel



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, F/M, Ned is dead and gone, POV Second Person, R plus L still equals J, Teen Pregnancy, all aboard the handbasket to hell, eventually, i reiterate this is going to HURT, sorry this is so US-centric, the Starks are downwardly mobile, the modern au about being poor in america that nobody asked for, this is going to hurt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-21
Updated: 2018-04-05
Packaged: 2019-04-05 09:23:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14041137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tabacoychanel/pseuds/tabacoychanel
Summary: Jon is dead. Arya is seventeen and pregnant.





	1. Chapter 1

Six weeks after Jon’s funeral, you pee on a stick that you bought at the dollar store. There are two sticks in the box so you pee on both of them just to be sure, and after a while two pink lines materialize. The box, you notice, is expired. The eggs you had for breakfast were expired too. So far you feel no urge to throw them up.

On the one hand it’s a cheap product wrapped in chintzy packaging. On the other hand most of the canned goods in the pantry are expired, and no harm has ever come to any of you from eating those, and are you really going to walk five miles to Target and pay four times as much for superior packaging? On the third hand Rickon is hammering urgently on the door and screeching your name.

“Jesus Christ, Rickon.” You lever herself up to collect the sticks from the edge of the bathtub. “What did I tell you about waiting too long?”

As soon as you crack the door open he charges past you. It has not been all that long since the last time he wet the bed, an incident Bran brings up at every opportunity. You close the door behind you but wait until you hear a soft tinkling sound. “You good?”

“G’way,” comes the muffled response.

So you stand in the hall clutching two used pregnancy tests and wonder how you are going to get rid of them. The house is quiet. Your mother is working the night shift so she will be napping upstairs with Iron Chef on, and Sansa never comes home after school when she can attend a club or a meeting instead. That leaves Bran, who is cheerfully chomping on cereal in the kitchen. You can hear him even at this distance. You decide not to risk the trash barrel.

The dumpster is in an alley at the end of the street. When you get there you find Gendry taking a last drag of his cigarette before stubbing it out with the heel of his galoshes, the non-slip kind he wears for work.

“Hey.” He nods in acknowledgment.

“Hey.” You nod back.

He fumbles for the pack in his pocket, flips it open, snags one slim white cylinder between his fingers and offers it to you. You are already reaching for it before you find yourself pulling your hand back with an abortive motion.

“I don’t,” you explain, and when he looks askance adds, “smoke Camels.”

While Gendry puffs away you scuff your feet and pretend to study the graffiti behind him and think about how much less awkward this would be if you’d just taken the damn cigarette. It would have given your hands something to do, for one thing. It would have given your brain something to do. Gendry has no compunction about rebuffing people - notably Lommy Greenhands - so it means something that he is _voluntarily_ offering you a cigarette.

“I’m … actually trying to quit,” you confess, which you didn’t realize you were until you say it out loud.

Gendry asks, “You think that’s a good idea right now?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, it’s the third time you missed history this week. Maybe you’re showing up to all your other classes, I wouldn’t know. But. Doesn’t seem like now’s a good time to give up something that helps, you know, keep your head on straight.”

“I don’t need,” you reply icily, “your advice.”

He shrugs, impassive. “Wasn’t offering any. Only a butt.” Presently he finishes his second one and trudges back to work.

You have exchanged fewer than twenty words with Gendry in history class; you wouldn’t have expected him to notice your absence, much less comment on it. You wouldn’t have expected him to care. It discomfits you to imagine that there is anyone left who cares what happens to you now.

By the end of the day you’ve downloaded the Smoke Free app and resisted three separate cravings, each of which you methodically document: four hours of life regained, according to the app. This is a sick joke. What do you need with four extra hours _now_? You would give anything for another four hours with Jon. You would saw off your own right arm just to hear his voice again.

You’ve googled the nearest Planned Parenthood clinic, which is 67 miles away. Jon would have driven you. But then, if Jon were here you wouldn’t be in this fix. _Wouldn’t you?_ whispers a small voice, which gives you pause. Is the problem that your brother knocked you up or is the problem that you cannot bring yourself to let go of the last thing you have left of him?

Here is the truth: You are seventeen years old and your life is over. All that remains is the rest.

+

Once, he asked you, “Are you sure you want to keep doing this?”

“Am I sure I want you to keep giving me orgasms?”

“Arya. If you ever change your mind.”

“I think I know my own goddamn mind.”

“I’m more worried that you don’t know anyone _else_ ’s mind. You don’t know what you’re missing. How could you? You’ve never been with anyone else.”

And _god_ , isn’t that just like him, to worry about your psychosocial development before his own erection.

You could have shot back, _There's no one else I'd rather be with._ You could have told him, _You are everything to me_. Instead: “Let’s say I go out with — oh I don’t know, Edric, tomorrow. Let’s say you walk in on us in making out. Be honest: What would you do? ”

Jon doesn’t answer but you read his response in the tightening of muscles around his mouth. Your grin is triumphant. “I thought so.”

+

You are thirteen when you feel something viscous and warm gush out of you and you think _oh_ because it doesn’t hurt. Your impression was that it ought to hurt. It always hurts Sansa: though she never complains, for a few days a month she carries herself more carefully. And you have seen the pills your mother keeps in the medicine cabinet.

You are at the beach, sitting out the volleyball game because the sun makes you drowsy. You want to wrap the towel around your torso except you can’t yank it out from under Rickon who is building a sand castle. In fact it looks like a turtle. You wait.

After fifteen interminable minutes the game is over, the kids disperse, and Jon comes back holding out a can of soda to you. You are hugging your knees.

“Hey,” he chides, when you don’t move. “I paid cash money for this.”

“I need you to come to the bathroom with me,” you inform him.

He scratches his neck, where the sunburn has already begun to set in. “Isn’t that more Sansa’s department?”

In no universe would _being your bathroom buddy_ ever be filed under Sansa’s department. You level him a glare. “You have to walk behind me. I don’t - I can’t tell if it’s bled through my shorts.”

His face changes then. He casts one quick assessing glance at Rickon and his pail of sand before steering you away from the water. His hand is big and warm between your shoulder blades.

There is a sanitary napkin vending machine but it’s empty. You peer at the tampon dispenser for a long moment before going back outside to ask Jon for quarters.

“We should see if Sansa brought any with —”

“No.”

Because you know - you _know_ Sansa keeps tampons in her purse because you know Sansa; you were there that time Jeyne Poole needed to borrow one. You will not ask Sansa for this. You will walk down the beach bleeding all over the sand first.

You curl your fingers around the coins, pressing the edges into your palm. “I don’t know how to. Never done it before.”

“That makes two of us,” Jon points out. “Just - go. Go and do it. I’ll be right here.”

You wish there was some way he could accompany you inside. You are flummoxed not so much by the mechanics of it - with which Jon would be scant help since he is no more experienced at inserting a tampon than you are - as by the conspiracy of silence that shrouds the whole activity in secrecy. Women bleed. This is a fact. You are bleeding. In the olden days they might have sequestered you in a big red tent for the duration. There’s no need for that now they’ve invented tampons. It takes you an age to shove the thing in, and you wonder how such a narrow passage could possibly admit penises and infants’ skulls. You resolve to discuss this with Jon later.

When you finally emerge, he is leaning against a tree, sunlight dappling his skin. In three strides he’s holding you out at arm’s length, tilting your chin up with the thumb of his left hand.

“I’m not a horse, Jon.”

“But you’re all right.”

“Yes.”

“Good.” His thumb is stroking your jawline, and your eyes flutter closed. At length he says, “I’m sorry.”

“What for?”

“I wish you didn’t have to do this alone.”

You suppress the instinct to shake your head in denial. You concentrate on remaining perfectly still so as not to dislodge his thumb from its resting place against your cheek. “Do you remember the time we went to Asha’s quinceañera and Theon was so drunk he couldn’t do the waltz with her like he was supposed to and one of her cousins had to fill in?”

“I - sure. The tall one with two left feet. I remember.” He looks at you, expectant. It’s not like your family is Latino. It’s not like y’all have got a spare six grand lying around that you could piss away on a party.

“You are hands down the best brother in the world,” you assure him, because he absolutely is.

+

You bury your brother in the same dress you buried your father. It’s the only black one you’ve got. You’ve got other brothers, though, and your mother doesn’t let you forget it. You wonder if she would endorse the commutative property of brothers so enthusiastically if she’d ever had more than the one herself. Or if she hadn’t married one Stark brother in place of another - like livestock, interchangeable. These are among the more unforgivable things you say to your mother.

You don’t _want_ her to forgive you. You are not sure you’ll ever forgive yourself.

+

Gilly brings her baby to Sam’s and changes his diaper right there in the middle of Mrs. Tarly’s living room, after allowing a decent pause for people to raise objections. There are zero objections. She accomplishes the task with practiced ease, by turns cooing at the baby and chatting with Val about about job openings at the mall, and hands off the resultant package for Sam to dispose of.

“The thing is, Sam works Saturdays. And they say you have to have weekend availability.”

“What about your dad?” asks Val.

“Please. I’m lucky he didn’t kick me out when I got pregnant.”

She had gone back to the diner she used to work at part-time, but they didn’t have enough hours for her. She had dropped out of school halfway through last year but she was working on getting her GED because “Sam insists.” When Sam comes back into the room the baby squirms until Gilly passes him over, and Sam settles him on one hip. This is the same Sam who, when he used to come over to your house when he was younger, would have picked up a burning coal before picking up Rickon, he was that terrified of dropping a live child. _It’s not even his own goddamn kid_.

No one knows who the father of Gilly’s son is. Gilly merely says that he’s not in the picture anymore. Alys Karstark says the reason Gilly started sleeping around so much, so early, was because of trauma from her dad and the sexual abuse she suffered at his hands. Alys Karstark would know, of course. There are plenty of questions to which you’d like to shake the answers out of Alys: Was it abuse because she was underage? Was it abuse because he was in a position of authority over her? If so then putting aside her uncles, how can what her cousin Cregan did to her count? He was just as underage as Alys was.

Or was it the ties of blood they shared?

What other possible explanation can there be for why the anti-abortion crowd invariably carve out exceptions for “rape, incest, and endangerment to the life of the mother”? If incest falls under the rape umbrella because of power dynamics or whatever, then why set it up as a separate category? Unless there is something special about incest. Unless it’s wrongdirtybad, and you are a sicko for wanting it as much as you did, and what happened to Jon was only biblical justice.

+

You used to follow Jon outside when he smoked, long before you picked up the habit yourself. Not at his behest - indeed, against his express wishes.

“You want me to give you cancer, is that it?”

If he’s fine with giving _himself_ cancer, you don’t see what the big deal is. You lower herself gingerly into a folding patio chair, and relax when it doesn’t collapse beneath you. “I don’t think it works like that.”

“Like what?”

“You’d have to chain-smoke your way from coast to coast, probably. With me in the passenger seat and the windows up the entire time.”

Jon, who is hunting for the ash tray with his free hand, looks up long enough to marvel, “Arya. I believe you are actually disappointed that we are not going to do that.”

This is what they say about your family: that you are the stubborn one. They’re wrong. Sansa is twice as stubborn as you are; she merely covers it up with masterful misdirection.

“If Robb ever started smoking,” you observe, “Mom would flip a table.”

“Which is why I do and he doesn’t.”

It has never before occurred to you that the reason Jon smokes is because Robb can’t. Jon’s tone is devoid of any inflection as he continues, “We all do our part, Arya. Remember that.”

If Sansa wasn’t The Smart One, would you have to be The Rebellious One? Is it a role you would have chosen for yourself? There is no way to know, and you quickly decide that you don’t care. You focus on what’s important, which is Jon’s grim determination to play his role to the hilt. “Are you giving yourself lung cancer in order to _bring balance to the Force_? Are you serious right now?”

As soon as you see him crack a smile something relaxes inside you.

But you remember what he told you. You remember it when a month later your mother catches Robb washing dishes with his sleeves rolled up, and sees the track marks from the needles, and all hell breaks loose. Of course they are very faint marks, much fainter than Jon’s. Jon donates plasma twice a week, and it’s the reason that Bran can go to chess club tournaments and Rickon can have cleats and gloves that fit. Robb points out, reasonably, that the winter moratorium on utility disconnections ends on April 1 and at that point there will be six months of electric bills to pay if she doesn’t want the power shut off. “Where are you gonna find the money, Mom? We already spent the tax refund paying down the credit cards.”

“It’s not your _job_ ,” she says, white-faced with rage. “And tell Jon he can sleep somewhere else for the next few days.” You realize then that your mother is equal parts angry that Robb has gone to donate plasma with Jon, and angry that he is sticking up for Jon. This makes you angry in turn, because why should Jon’s contribution go unremarked upon? He would let them stick needles in him four, five times a week if they’d allow it (thank heaven the limit is twice). He’s got good veins, he once told you jokingly — they send the rookie nurses to practice on him.

The truth is, he didn’t have to stay after Dad was gone. He was eighteen; he could have moved out and been shot of your mother for good and still visited as often as he liked. He didn’t, though, because he wanted to stay under the same roof as the rest of you. Even if it meant enduring your mother’s abuse.

_We all do our parts, Arya._

+

The worst thing about food stamps is that when you run out of toilet paper you can’t use the SNAP card to pay for it, because toilet paper is not food. Neither is shampoo or kibble for the dogs. (Eventually, when the big house goes into foreclosure, you have to give up the dogs along with the yard.)

It’s illegal to solicit people for money in exchange for SNAP. Jon stands outside of Wal-Mart and does it anyway, bareheaded having forgot his hat, shifting his weight from foot to foot. Unlike the Salvation Army bell ringer nearby, neither of you is dressed for this.

“Go inside,” he urges. “Go look at some video games.”

You roll your eyes and burrow your hands into his pockets. You haven’t done that since the two of you used to wait together at the bus stop, ages and ages ago. He makes no further effort to chivy you along, just rests his chin on top of your head. It’s nice, the way the two of you fit. You’re warmer already.

“Thank you, ma’am. You have a nice Christmas,” says the bell ringer.

“You do the same,” returns the woman.

A small boy, younger than Rickon, approaches with a bill crumpled in his fist. “You want to ring the bell too and say ‘Merry Christmas’?” The boy glances over his shoulder at his mother for permission.

A shadow falls over you. You turn to find a man with the worst acne you’ve ever seen and eyes like pools of dead water. He takes his time raking you up and down before he meets Jon’s eyes. “You got something for me, Snow?”

Jon extends one hand while tightening the other around your waist. “There’s one-forty in SNAP benefits on this card. I’ll take a hundred for it.”

“You’ll take fifty for it, and thank me on your knees.”

Fifty is not enough. Also, the man is a creep. Jon shoots you a look that says _I told you to go inside_. The man continues to drink you in openly, speculatively. The longer he keeps looking, the stronger the certainty grows that you will never, ever be clean again. It’s as if you’re wearing a backless dress with no bra instead of one of Jon’s castoff sweatshirts.

Jon can feel the tension thrumming under your skin. He growls, “Leave my sister out of it.”

The man’s lips curve upward into a smile: about as attractive as two worms fucking but suffused with genuine pleasure. “Your sister, is it?” and that’s when all the blood rushes to your face as you realize his target is not you at all. He’s been gunning for Jon all along.

Your hands are balled into fists. You don’t recall taking them out of Jon’s pockets, you don’t recall shifting your weight onto your back foot but by god you are ready to throw a punch.

The sound of bells grows more insistent. “How you doing today, sir?” You have never been so glad to see a man in a Santa hat in your entire life.

It is not, you reflect later, that you would not have relished a knock-down drag-out fight in the Wal-Mart parking lot. The man with the dead eyes certainly had it coming. It’s just that your mother and/or Robb would probably not have handled bailing you out of jail too well. And though you and Jon don’t walk into Wal-Mart with the one hundred dollars you were hoping for, you have the twenty that the Salvation Army bell ringer gave you, and at least you’ll go home with toilet paper today.

As you slouch toward the shopping carts you ask Jon, “Who was that?”

“That,” he says, “was Domeric Bolton’s brother.”


	2. Chapter 2

The third time you get up in the middle of the night to pee, you flush the toilet and open the door to find Sansa waiting for you. She stands there, long red hair in a braid thrown over one shoulder, one fluffy bunny slipper tapping against the floor, and just looks at you.

You grimace. “What is it? I’ll turn the light off this time.”

The silence lengthens. You wonder why she bothered to get out of bed when she could have waited for you back in the room. The way she’s not budging, she definitely didn’t follow you to use the toilet herself. 

Her eyes flicker from your face to your Nirvana T-shirt and back to your face again. You watch her jaw work as she discards three or four different rejoinders before she finally settles on, “You never used to have boobs.” 

The dark aerolas of your nipples are plainly visible beneath your white T-shirt. You cross your arms over your chest. “So? I’ve never had to buy a fancy sports bra with actual cups to hold them, either.”

“Do they hurt?” she asks.

You open your mouth to tell her to mind her own fucking business.

“Margaery’s did, she told me. She was spared the morning sickness but she had to sleep with a bra on, hers were so tender.” 

You go absolutely rigid. A cold fist of fear grips your throat where the words are lodged. The first and easiest thing for you to wrap your mind around is, _Margaery Tyrell got an abortion?_

“It was last year, in the summer,” Sansa supplies without prompting. Margaery is not the kind of girl who would let a little thing like a baby get in the way of her big plans. “And I swore on Dad’s grave that I wouldn’t tell anyone, so don’t let it get out.”

“Sansa,” you hiss. “Why are we having this conversation?” 

“Because I took Margaery to the clinic. Me and Loras waited with her.”

“And you’re … offering to take me to the clinic?” you ask in mounting disbelief. 

“I’m offering to be your sister. If you’ll let me.”

“How do I know you won’t turn around and gab to Mom? Since swearing on Dad’s grave apparently means jack shit to you.”

She looks at you steadily. “Would you rather I swear on Jon’s grave?”

“Go to _hell_ ,” you tell her. You push past her, march down the hall, and attain the real if ephemeral satisfaction of slamming the door in her face.

Since the door doesn’t lock and it’s her room too, Sansa slips in after a few minutes. You’ve pulled the blanket over you but you can hear her moving around, and you’re afraid that she’ll try and sit on the edge of your bed and talk your ear off. A bona fide sisterly heart-to-heart. But she is only hanging her bathrobe up. 

In the morning she doesn’t pause in front of you as she goes around with the coffee pot. She doesn’t speak to you at all, merely hands you a couple of granola bars as you’re shrugging your backpack on. They’re chocolate cherry flavored. 

In the evening she brings you a a cup of ginger tea. At the wrinkle that appears between your brows, she says, “Just try it. Please.”

And you’ve never cared for the peppery bite of the herb before—you don’t even drink gingerale, which is mostly sugar—but after two sips you swear your head weighs half as much as it did. Sansa is watching you narrowly, and when you don’t immediately shove the mug away she nods to herself, satisfied. “There’s a whole pack of those behind the Oreos in the pantry.”

It dawns on you that you don’t mind Sansa being here. Usually she manages to irritate you within five minutes of entering the same room, but to your surprise you don’t want to tell her to leave right now. It _is_ her room as well; yet you feel no inclination to reach for your headphones, which is how the two of you normally handle coexisting in the same space.

“Tell me something. When you get up at night— is it the nausea, or is it your bladder?”

You bite your lip. “Both,” you admit. “And I don’t sleep and I’m tired all the time.”

“Yes. You look like shit,” she agrees. That sounds more like the Sansa you know, except there is a note of something vital missing from the way she delivers the words, something you’re so used to hearing in her voice that the lack of it leaves you off-balance. With some difficulty you place it as … defensiveness. She does not sound like she has anything to prove to you, any particular stake in proving that she is right and you are wrong. It’s a giant goddamn olive branch and you have too much of your father’s sense of justice to spurn it. 

“Thank you for not getting me the oatmeal granola bars.”

She looks away. “Jon would always make sure we got both kinds. Since you don’t eat the oatmeal.”

There is something caught in your ribcage, beating to get out. Your heart, in all likelihood. “Sansa, you haven’t asked me who the father is.”

She sighs, and when she looks up her eyes go to Sonic Youth T-shirt you’re wearing today. “Do you realize you’ve been living in his clothes for six weeks?”

 _Six and a half_. You clutch at the hem of the shirt, fingers opening and closing. “Do you think I’m a monster?” you ask, unable to keep the tremor out of your voice.

She doesn’t flinch. “I think you’re my sister. Maybe not the one I asked for, but you’re the one I’ve got.” 

You are reminded that Margaery Tyrell does not have any sisters. 

“You haven’t told me to get rid of it.”

“Do you want to get rid of it?”

What you _want_ is the other half of your soul back. “I haven’t thought that far.”

“You haven’t thought about seeking out basic home remedies for early pregnancy symptoms, either. Which you would have, if you’d spent five minutes on the internet like I did. Arya, he’s gone. Are you planning to follow him?”

Jon’s clothes don’t smell like him anymore. After a few days all you can smell is yourself; just the prospect of running out of T-shirts induces the beginnings of a panic. “It’s like I can’t go forward and I can’t go back. I can’t tell people - I mean, what am I supposed to tell people? But I can’t get rid of it. Sansa, I _can’t._ ”

“Nobody is telling you to.”

The entire fucking world is telling you to. “If Mom finds out …”

“She won’t. Not from me. Now drink your tea.”


	3. Chapter 3

You knock for a solid ten seconds before turning the knob of Jon’s door. There are probably lyrics buried somewhere in the music but all you can hear is the screeching of the electric guitar. He’s underneath the covers, which you think is odd, until you see him, and then it’s not. He’s paler than you remember. It’s the tail end of February and you haven’t seen him with his shirt off since he stopped sharing a bathroom with you and Sansa, since he moved down to the basement. His breathing is a little too labored and his collarbones too prominent. 

“Jesus, don’t you knock anymore?” he shouts. 

“I did. You didn’t hear.” You turn your back on him, drift over to the stereo and fiddle with the dial. Behind you there is rustling, movement. By the time you turn back around he is wearing jeans but still no shirt. 

“What is it, Arya?” He never asks you that. He never asks you what you want from him or why you’re here. It’s not as if you need a reason to seek him out. It would be more accurate to say that he exerts a gravitational pull on you, and you might stray closer or farther away but in the end you can’t escape his orbit.

He hasn’t said anything about your hair. You’ve spent an hour watching YouTube tutorials and borrowed Sansa’s curling iron and this is all you have to show for it, a couple of lackluster curls that will probably die before you hit the dance floor. Well, there’s no help for it. “How do I look?” you ask him.

“Is that what you came in here to ask me?”

“Are we just going to keep answering questions with questions?”

“Why not?” he says, crossing his arms mulishly. 

“You could say something nice about my outfit,” you suggest. “My hair. Anything.”

His voice softens. “You know I love your hair.”

Your hair is dull, not shiny like Sansa’s glorious red mane. It’s ash-brown and stick-straight, and usually you just throw it in a ponytail to be out of the way. When you were in grade school there was a kid who sat behind you who thought it would be amusing to tug on your braid — back then your mother wove it into a neat plait for you — although he stopped after you kicked him in the shin. You both wound up in the principal’s office after. Nobody else touches your hair now — your mother stopped after Dad was gone — no one except Jon, who likes to draw the elastic free so he can run his fingers through the loose strands. He doesn’t do it now, though. He doesn’t even beckon you closer and really that’s all right, you can stare at his chest hairs from here without having to battle the temptation to reach out and touch them. 

You have put more effort into thinking about what to wear for the winter formal than you’ve spared for your entire wardrobe all year, but it doesn’t amount to much if Jon won’t acknowledge it. “I should have gotten a dress.” Sansa was aghast when you didn’t.

Jon shakes his head, however. “I don’t know that any of the dresses at Macy’s would have done you justice.”

“Um, thanks. I guess.”

“When is Edric supposed to be here?”

“Seven-thirty, he said.”

“It’s seven-twenty now.”

You know damn well what time it is now. You don’t know why you ever thought Jon would make you feel better instead of worse. Disgusted, you head for the door. “Well, sorry to interrupt. You can go back to what you were doing.”

He catches your wrist before you make it there. You try to wrench it free but his grip doesn’t loosen, and before you can launch your free hand he’s caught that one too. He’s holding both your wrists and standing so close you can smell him, not the freshly shampooed smell but the familiar scent of Jon, all Jon. “What is it you think I was doing?” he demands. 

You snort. “I’m not stupid.”

“I didn’t … mean for you to see that.” Of all the inappropriate times for his overprotective instinct to kick in, this has got to take the cake. 

“So you’ll apologize for jerking off, but not for being a jerk. You’ve got it backwards, Jon.”

You don’t miss the hitch in his breathing at the words “jerking off.” He can’t have missed the way your pulse has quickened, even if he is only holding your wrists loosely now. He drops them in order to tangle his fingers in your hair. _Yes_. _This_ is what you came here for, his fingers tenderly threading through your hair, the pads of his thumbs at the base of your skull, tilting your face up toward him. “Look at me,” he says. “You are beautiful.” 

You press your palm against his bare chest, fingers splayed apart. “It doesn’t - it doesn’t feel real unless you say it.”

“You’re beautiful,” he repeats, eyes traveling from the crown of your head to your lips, the column of your throat, the barely visible swell of your breasts. Everywhere his eyes linger leaves a warmth spreading beneath your skin, until you are hot all over. 

“I don’t think I ever set out to be a tomboy. It just seems so pointless, trying to look good when next to Sansa …. well, who’s going to look at me if I’m standing next to Sansa?”

“Edric Dayne?” he suggests with a twist of his mouth. Heaven help you but you cannot tear your eyes away from the sight of his mouth. 

“You’re the only one who’s ever looked and seen me first.”

That draws a chuckle out of him, a pleasant rumble beneath your palm. “Sometimes, Arya, I can’t see anything else.” He untangles his fingers from your hair and the obvious reluctance with which he releases you does more for your self-esteem than a hundred Instagram likes. He says, “You’re going to be late.”

It doesn’t matter. Noting matters except that Jon thinks you’re beautiful, Jon thinks you’re perfect. “Edric only asked me because Shireen is taking Patchface as some sort of pity date.” The words tumble out of you so fast they trip over each other. 

“Oh?” It’s ridiculous to watch Jon decide whether he wants to be displeased with Edric for being into you, or for _not_ being sufficiently into you. “You didn’t mention that part.”

You look down, a smile stealing over you.

“Arya, were you _trying_ to make me jealous?”

You raise your eyes to him hopefully. “Is it working?”

His sigh is half exasperated, half impressed-despite-himself. “I can’t deal with you right now. Go, scat, have a good time — not too good of a time! — just get out of here before I strangle you.”

You stick your tongue out at him as you back out of his room. All you can think about for the rest of the night, of course, is his mouth.


End file.
